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Christmas in November: Stores want to take your money

It’s early September on a Sunday morning, it’s warm outside with a brisk breeze. Your mother asks you to come with her grocery shopping at your local supermarket.

The drive is quick, but you notice the tree leaves are turning orange. You even notice a few colorful leaves on the cement sidewalk.

You walk into the market and the first thing that catches your eyes are Halloween decorative bags full of assorted candies. Usually people give these out on Halloween night. But why are they being sold at the beginning of September?

As you walk through the store towards the hand soaps you spot a plastic Santa-Claus-and-reindeer container full of red, festive, liquid soap. You can’t believe what you’re seeing. It’s the beginning of September and there are Christmas soaps being sold!

Can we say the holiday seasons start in September? The month of September rolls around and right away holiday decorations from A-Z are put on the shelves.

Christmas. Hanukkah. Halloween. Thanksgiving. New Years? You name the holiday, it will probably start being advertised as early as September.

In early October I went to World Market, which is a store that sells different styles of home decorations. They also sell different types of candies and foods from all over the world. Usually when a holiday is just right around the corner they start to sell decorations for that particular holiday.

I couldn’t help but notice this year was different from the rest. I walked into the store and right when I walked in all I saw was Christmas decorations! I hardly saw any sign of Halloween, other than a small section right next to the booming image of Christmas that was in my face.

Was Christmas coming earlier than usual? Were we just going to skip over all the other holidays that take place in the next few months? I couldn’t help but wonder why a store would sell decorations months in advance from the actual holiday. So, I set up a survey to ask people what they had thought on the topic.

Handfuls of people said that stores only put decorations out extra early to make more money. “People can buy decorations early and they can maximize profits by having a long selling period,” says senior Kyle Miller.

A freshman at Leigh high school who would like to stay anonymous gave a good reason saying, “A lot of people look forward to the holidays, and stores use it as a way to sell their merchandise. I don’t personally agree with the stores using a holiday about giving and family to get money, but it happens.”

Senior Rachel Huynh says, “Stores put decorations out early to give people a cozy feeling when they walk in; happy customers spend more money on themselves and others!”

“Stores that put decorations up early give people the notice it’s time for the holiday and that they want their money to be spent there. It’s not so much put up for ‘holiday spirit’ but to recreate a festive environment to make people want to buy from the store.” says junior Gillian Ibarra.

Others believe that stores do it to make the fun holiday season feel like it lasts longer.

“Stores do this to get people thinking about the holidays early so that they start buying gifts early, giving time for the stores to make more money,” says junior Taryn Shawhan.

Other people, like senior Cami Raynaud gave a simpler reasonings saying, “To get the hype up!” or like Kevin Kim, a junior at Leigh High school, said, “It’s a sly marketing tactic.”Freshman Tristan Fritsch says, “To hype people up for the holidays, and also as a way to show their customers that they care about the holidays.”

In my opinion, I think stores use this strategy of putting out holiday decorations early to profit but it can also benefit customers in a way that they can spread out their spending budget for the holidays, rather than spending it all at once.